VeloRaptors closed out 2025 in great form with our Holiday Party – Thank you to Fred and Alyston for hosting in their fabulous home
Just Before Christmas The HackoRaptors (Tuesday edition) had a fun lunch following 9 holes at Diablo Hills
Even though the rain kept us off the road on New Year’s Eve, a gaggle of Wednesday Riders gathered at L’Cajou for coffee and socialization.
Finally, check out new additions to the website.
In particular, Organized Rides page has been update to include several more local rides, with links to their registration pages. Find this on the site at Rides and Routes / Organized Rides
Also check out Richard Goodman’s recommended books list for 2025 at:
For Members / Food For Thought / Raptor Readers.
One more thing – don’t forget to renew your membership by sending dues to Chris Scrivani before March 1, using zelle or Venmo.
Input from Richard Goodman, Larry DiCostanzo and Bill Bagnell
First from Richard:
Fiction
Russell Banks, Magic Kingdom (2022). Since I am drawn to books that take me to times and places new to me, I reveled in this tale of rural Florida in the early 20th century and the Shaker community that first thrived, then struggled there.
Geraldine Brooks, March (2005). This novel reimagines the life of Mr. March (the unseen father in Little Women) as a chaplain during the Civil War. With luminous prose, it shines a light on the wretched lives of the newly released slaves, of the unimaginably horrible front lines and of the grim conditions in Civil War hospitals.
Percival Everett, James (2024). This novel retells the story of Huckleberry Finn from the standpoint of the enslaved Jim (here, called “James”). Although it may be heresy to admit this, I enjoyed James more than Mark Twain’s original, which I reread at the same time!
Bernard Malamud, The Fixer (1967). This novel, which won both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize in 1967, is based on the true story of a poor Jew in Tsarist Russia who is accused of the ritual murder of a Russian boy. Difficult to read but impossible to put down.
Gary Shteyngart, Vera, or Faith (2025). This dystopian tale follows a precocious 10 year old girl (Vera) in near-future America. The story, told from Vera’s perspective, follows her attempts to connect with her Korean-American birth mother and to hold together her (very!) blended family as it struggles with rising authoritarianism. Somber yet hilarious!
Wallace Stegner, The Angle of Repose (1971). This Pulitzer Prize–winning novel weaves together the story of a retired historian confined to a wheelchair and the 19th-century frontier lives of his grandparents, whose letters and papers he is studying.
Elizabeth Strout, Olive, Again (2019). This novel, told through interconnected stories, focuses on Olive Kitteridge,
a prickly retired math teacher from Crosby, Maine featured in a previous Strout novel. It spans roughly a decade of Olive’s later life as she navigates aging, loneliness, love, regret, and connection. You can’t go wrong with this or with any of Strout’s novels!
Non–Fiction ——————–
Frances Dinkelspiel, Towers of Gold (2008). This is a biography of the author’s great-great-grandfather, Isaias Hellman, a Jewish immigrant who rose from penniless store clerk to powerful financier in California. It chronicles how Hellman’s financial acumen and investments in industries like banking (including Wells Fargo), transportation, viticulture, and oil played a pivotal role in transforming California from a raw frontier into a modern economy. A terrific read!
Richard Federko, A Walk in the Park (2024). Just how many things can go wrong when you attempt to hike the entire Grand Canyon? More than you can imagine!
Stephen Greenblatt, Dark Renaissance (2025). I had no previous interest in Christopher Marlowe and knew only that he was a contemporary of Shakespeare. My bad! Marlowe’s story, told by a master storyteller, is as fascinating as that of the Bard of Avon!
Patrick McGee, Apple in China (2025). McGee chronicles the background of Apple’s placing all of its bets on China, currently doing 90% of its manufacturing there. It is thereby putting itself at great risk as well as training China’s next generation of engineers, who may go on to develop hostile technology.
Russell Shorto, The Island at the Center of the World (2004). Who knew that New Amsterdam, the Dutch colony that became New York, was the font of American diversity or that a a Dutch-born lawyer named Adriaen van der Donck was the true father of the liberties we cherish?
Ian Tattersall, Masters of the Planet: The Search for Our Human Origins (2012). This book explores how Homo Sapiens became the dominant species on Earth, focusing on the unique traits that allowed us to outcompete other human species, such as Neanderthals.
Amanda Vaill, Pride and Pleasure: The Schuyler Sisters in an Age of Revolution (2025). Having revered Ron Chernow’s Hamilton in 2016, I wondered what more there was to say about this man and his family. Much, much more, it turns out, especially when the focus is on his wife and sister-in-law!
Irvin Yalom, Becoming Myself: A Psychiatrist’s Memoir (2017). Yalom arose from an impoverished immigrant home to become a foremost modern psychotherapist, writing numerous books along the way (I read three of his other books this year, as well as this one!)
My very favorite books this year were:
Fiction – Brooks, Geraldine, March (2005).
Non-Fiction – Stephen Greenblatt, Dark Renaissance (2025).
Happy New Year and happy reading to all of you!
Now from Larry DiCostanzo:
My friend, Richard Goodman, has inspired me yet again to send out my list of favorite books of 2025. The fact is that I didn’t get time to read a lot, given how our year was one of medical extravaganzas. I think I did “comfort reading” — old favorites, a book I read as a child, and some books about the medieval world. Everything on the list is fiction. Larry
Here you go:
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky: Once again I’ve read this great murder mystery that, like many modern mystery movies, closes with a trial. The eponymous brothers and many others are portrayed as unique individuals with intense interactions and flights of individualism. The contrasts are great and wonderful: for example, a very serious scene followed by the most beautiful description of a happy dog in love with his young master.
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen: It always pays to reread a good book and shake off one’s bias. This time, I finally realized that both the pride and the prejudice were the traits of the heroine Elizabeth Bennett and that Mr. Darcy is, in fact, the good guy. This is a delightfully complicated book with insights into how law and society influence character. P.s. Did you know this is the 250th anniversary of Miss Austen’s birth? That by happenstance I came across her grave in Winchester Cathedral?
Paradise Lost by John Milton: I am not quite sure if Mr. Milton “justified the ways of God to Man” as he had hoped. But he was certainly valiant. Plus he wrote a hard-to-read (for us) but verbally exciting story that is like super science fiction in many respects (think battles in space), fantasy in others (think evil guys holding conferences) and an excellent retelling of the story of Adam and Eve as people who don’t really have much experience and certainly don’t have a past. Not for the faint hearted.
The Heat of the Day and The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen: Miss Bowen is an Anglo-Irish woman who wrote from the 1930s through about 1960. The first book is a World War Two story in which a widowed English woman with a son in the army has to worry about whether her English lover is actually a mole or agent for Germany. The second book is pre-war and concerns how a young person loses trust because of one single event: An adult exercises thoughtless privilege to read her diary without permission. Bowen is a serious writer and, I think, an amazing stylist.
The Pickup by Nadine Gordimer: In this relatively short book, Nadine Gordimer tells the story of a privileged young South African woman who meets a car mechanic who is an illegal alien with high intelligence, dissatisfactions, and hopes. He is caught out, they marry, and must move to his unnamed Islamic desert country. Conflict arises as she discovers she is content there, and he is always seeking escape. This is a beautiful book.
Grettir’s Saga by Anonymous: This book is one of the many Icelandic sagas written down in the 13th century, but harking back to earlier Viking times. These sagas are actually novels. This one is about the obsessively individualistic Grettir and how his asocial attitude leads to the disaffection of his fellows, to his isolation, and friendlessness. Believe me, friendlessness in medieval Iceland in no joke. The scenery and the way of life are well portrayed — indeed, so well that the editors add maps showing Grettir’s travels. If you think such early Viking age literature might be hard to get into, think again please.
River of Stars by Guy Gavriel Kay: This is a fantastic, rip-roaring book about a fantasy China under siege from steppe barbarians to the north. It is a great companion to “Under Heaven” also about fantasy China, and which I wrote about in an earlier list. Here there is poetry, sad ruin, cynical governance, savagery, a young man who rises from the bottom, unmerited failures and successes, and struggles between noble aspirations and loyalty. This is a page-turner.
Laurus by Eugene Vodolazkin: The high quality of the literature coming out of modern Russia is amazing. “Laurus”, set in the 1400s, is the fictional biography of a “holy fool”, a character that appears elsewhere in Russian art, for example, in Moussorgsky’s opera “Boris Godunov” or perhaps in Dostoyevsky’s “The Idiot”. This is a beautiful book with macro- and micro-landscapes (think forest and different kinds of moss and fungus), magic moments as in hagiography and a consistent narrative of a man whose whole life is determined by a youthful act of selfishness.
The Wheel on the School by Meindert DeJong: I must have read this book (about 300 pages) when it won the Newbury Medal in 1955. The teacher in a small school in a “stork-less” village in Friesland turns the kids loose to complete a project which is also a dream — to find a wagon wheel to put on top of the school for storks to nest on. The children have wonderful experiences as they forage. And I have never read a book in which the meeting of the world of children with the separate world of adults is so well done. There are great people like the legless fisherman and great visuals like the tinker’s horse wagon. Excellent values in a real world. Illustrations by a young Maurice Sendak.
Bill Bagnell’s List
I read the first three books in high school but may not read the others. For some reason that I don’t fully understand, I can’t seem to get into fiction these days, all I read is non-fiction. Here are a few to try:
Sexuality in Medieval Europe by Karras and Pierpont (I was curious);
The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes (a bit technical but a wonderfully written story about how basic research and brilliant people led to a massive WW2 effort to create a most terrible weapon);
The Death of Meyerhold by Mark Jackson (local playwright Jackson wrote this years ago for Shotgun Players, who are reviving it in a new production at the end of 2026. Script is available on Amazon, play will be a must-see, and sometimes reading a script in advance of seeing the production can enhance the experience).
Bill Bagnell
Life is a strange attractor
Gods are the tapeworms of the mind
Meyer Lemon Bars
These lemon bars have more filling and less crust than many other variations. The filling is adapted for Meyer lemons, which need less sugar than conventional lemons. The crust is a classic Scottish shortbread (hence the use of ounces), and is delicious by itself, if baked in a smaller pan.
Ingredients
Crust:
9 ounces all-purpose flour
6 ounces butter, cut into small cubes (if unsalted, add salt to taste)
3 ounces granulated sugar
Filling:
6 large eggs
2 1/2 cups granulated sugar (if using regular lemons, add an extra ¼ to ½ cup, according to taste)
Grated zest from 5-6 lemons
One cup lemon juice (from 5-6 typical Meyer lemons)
One cup all-purpose flour
Directions
- Preheat oven to 350oF.
- Place ingredients for crust in food processor and process until well blended (or rub butter into other ingredients by hand). Empty into a 9” by 13” baking pan (this should be about 2” deep to prevent the filling from overflowing during baking). Place in oven for two minutes to soften the mixture, then remove, and flatten the filling into the base of the pan using the back of a tablespoon. Build up a ½ inch edge on all sides. Return to oven and bake for 15-20 minutes until very lightly browned.
- Whisk all filling ingredients together until well mixed. Pour over baked crust and bake for 30-35 minutes until filling is set to taste (longer cooking times will give a firm filling – shorter times will give a stickier result).
- When cool, cut into triangles or bars. Dust with confectioner’s sugar if desired just before serving.
Dear Mr. and Mrs. Loving,
I can comprehend aloneness,
but your aloneness is too hard
for me. Never symbols, you were
just a name, just two persons
among the millions. Two persons
without defense.
Your helplessness faced force.
But obedience, endurance,
were the only choice, I guess.
There had to be anger, too,
some grudge in the obeying.
Later years, all the dust laid down,
your lives went on so quiet.
And so I’m left to wonder
what you cooked, and ate,
how you kept your house, where
you saved your money, worked.
I know that you had children,
a common having, as are long years
of widowhood and tending graves.
Now I’ve come to comprehend
your mystery, the final aloneness —
just the privacy of ordinary lives,
the equal, sometimes joyous,
hum-drum of us all —
coffee in the morning, toast,
fix the car, water the tomatoes,
grieve, complain about the heat —
all these accessories of love.
(It took me nine years to write this poem about Mr. and Mrs. Loving whose Supreme Court case ended any ban on marriages between persons of different races. I was and still am afraid of being presumptuous. But their love and the quiet of their lives was too strong a pull. It is surprising how dull the prose of the Court’s opinion is. Yet, like so much law, it uses the dry language of justice as a covering for beauty. And its effect was enormous: it allowed Mr. and Mrs. Loving to live their lives in peace. This poem will never be finished. I keep changing it and changing it in just little ways.)
Lawrence N. DiCostanzo
Best Non-fiction and Best Book of the Year!
Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne
by Katherine Rundell
This biography is a relatively short and superb review of the life and white-hot mind of our greatest poet of sexuality and also our most astounding preacher (as in “for whom the bell tolls”). The author, who has a gift for words herself, says Donne took Elizabethan love poetry down a dark alley and knifed it. Later in life, he filled St. Paul’s Cathedral in London with avid listeners. His years of hardship were more numerous that his years of success, but he was a loyal husband and the father of seven living children whom he raised on his wife’s death.
Best Fiction
Cancer Ward
by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
This long novel is a panorama of Soviet society in the time of Stalin as seen through the lens of a cancer hospital. But it is also an achingly gorgeous and slow love story between a physician and a patient who is a rough-and-ready permanent exile. The last pages at the least rival the last pages of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina.
The Fiction I Liked
I see that, this year, my favorites were not contemporary books. But, I tell you, the nineteenth century and the 1940s produced some incredible stuff.
My Cousin Rachel
by Daphne Du Maurier
I found this in a street-side library and said “What the heck.” Well, what a great book, and now I see why Miss DuMaurier was so famous. The author does not interpret what’s going on. IMO it is a story of the mental illness of an unlikely candidate. Intense.
Dubliners
by James Joyce
Wonderful stories about nice people, drunks, men who play on women to get petty amounts of money, etc. It has one of the best stories on drunks that concludes with impending domestic violence that will make you so sad.
The Way of All Flesh
by Samuel Butler
This author is an incredibly elegant and easy writer. The book is what I think is called a bildungsroman, the history of a young man from childhood to adult. And this kid has quite a path that includes a clergyman father, prison, an unwise marriage, etc., etc. It is amazing to me to read the violence with which boys used to be raised. (Beatings occur in another book of the 19th that I read this year.)
The Tale of the 1002nd Night
by Joseph Roth
The author had been a journalist, and this may be why he has an eye for story. A brief royal sexual intrigue affects the lives of the people involved in it. How can a girl who honestly came by the money involved, lose it over time, and end up in jail? How can the noble cavalryman who loves her (but won’t admit it) end up losing his self-esteem and his money because of her. A great story.
Ivanhoe
by Sir Walter Scott
Yes, I read this entire old chestnut. People think of Sir Walter as a romantic, but he is definitely not. His book is full of nasty, greedy people, and Ivanhoe is rather dumb as is Richard the Lion Heart. The shining light is Rebecca, the Jewish maiden, who can articulate for us the life of an outsider. Sir Walter deserves a rethink.
Imperium
by Richard Harris
Mr. Harris writes about ancient Rome, and he did a fabulous book called Pompeii. Imperium is about the early career of Cicero when the Roman Republic was being undermined. It is a great novel of law and politics by a writer who knows his stuff. I should tell you there are no gladiators, bloodshed, or mayhem.
Marrow and Bone
by Walter Kempowski
Kempowski obliquely visits a great German trauma — the 1945 winter flight of the civilian population of East Prussia before the advancing Soviet army. In 1988, the protagonist, who was born during the flight, gets a chance to tour East Prussia as part of a group planning a car rally. He comes on the places of his parents’ deaths and is transformed from a dilettantish, youthful life, to a directed adult life. A lovely book, with some laugh-out-loud passages.
The Non-Fiction I Liked
Reader Come Home
by Maryanne Wolf
We all love to read, and Prof. Wolf tells points out that reading is a marvel of the plastic mind because we are not genetically disposed to read. She talks about deep, reflective reading, and the good use of digital reading. She realizes we have to read in both realms, and her ideas about being “biliterate” are great. You can catch her utterly charming presence on an Ezra Klein podcast of 2023. Her voice and intelligence turned me onto this book.
Ancient Iraq
by Georges Roux
Mesopotamia has always fascinated me, and M. Roux satisfies the hunger. He wrote about the subject originally for an oil company magazine, and then transformed his work into a book that covers pre- and early history, the Sumerians, and onward through the Babylonians and Assyrians with clear presentations of the many other peoples who have stomped over this territory — Aramaeans, Hittites, Amalekites, Elamites, et al. Due to clay tablets, we probably know more about day-t-day history there than for practically any other age. Amazing.
All the best for the New Year,
Larry/Lawrence/Lorenzo
I climb above the fog, yet do not know
The reason for this effort. Can it be
The pleasure when I draw up and see
How sunlight blankets rolling grassland with no
Dark tree to stitch it to the blue. I slow
And see the seam of the horizon smooth
Against a bowl of blue, the only truth
And world my distant forebears long ago
Could love. They hoped beyond that line
There await the lovely muscled herds, the streams
Of fish, the comfort of a hunt: in short, the Place
Where limbs feel happy aches. God, rushing by when time
Runs down, should see I have romantic dreams
And fondly scoop me up from this high place —
The cycling dawdler with the dreamy face.
Bury me in a meadow, some untilled waste,
Next to fields of lettuce or off the highway’s verge.
Let it be my stone, engraved in repeated rotation
Through timeless years. Where rabbits start in the grass,
Mice rustle, and slender king snake makes his way,
In the warm breezeless understory of bush and weed;
Where song sparrow hangs on sideways to dry stalk,
And kestrel teeters, flaps, teeters, on rigid feathers
Spread out in points. Here it is dry and quiet.
And, when the Resurrection comes, let the trumpet be
The brassy, tuneless vibration of the bee, against the clacking
Of locust wings. Let my waking eyes gaze up
On sweet fennel or Queen Anne’s lace in sun.
And, if God should come to look for me, Let Him be
The cyclist, pausing to rest. Hands light
On handlebars and saddle, He gazes on this modesty.
And let Him say: This is too good to waste.
Our Wednesday ride was cancelled due to the incessant rain. Many of the Wednesday riders still needed their hit of caffeine, pastry and great socializing.
A little self-deprecating humor from a couple VeloRaptos.
For those who say we take cycling too seriously 😉
